Lastmile.Mobi offers last mile financial services like eKYC and others

The company pivoted from being a digital wallet to a financial last-mile enablerPayal Ganguly | ET Bureau | May 20, 2016, 08:01 IST

Seven-year-old Lastmile.Mobi has a licence to operate a digital wallet but it was the challenge of being an integrated payments platform that brought it fresh energy.Lastmile.Mobi now offers so-called 'last mile' financial services such as online 'know-your-customer' documentation for banks and finance institutions, payments collection for e-commerce and logistics companies and authentication."We are a plug-and-play solution that works with banks, insurance firms and logistics companies to leverage a part of the entire payments piece," said Jay Krishna, founder of Lastmile.Mobi.

The company, which was incorporated in 2008 and got a digital wallet licence in 2010, changed its strategy and began offering its new services last year.

"With the pivot on solving the last-mile (requirements), we have three pilots going on and one customer already for our platform," said Krishna.

"We are currently working on e-KYC for our banking and insurance partners and ran a pilot for a municipal corporation in Hyderabad for cash disbursement to wage workers using biometric and geo-tagged attendance."

Lastmile.Mobi earned $3.5 million in revenue in fiscal year 2015-16. For its digital wallet, Hot Remit, the company has partnered with BlackBerry Messenger for peerto-peer payments.

For clients like logistics firm Aramex and banks, the company offers an integrated payments platform and devices for delivery and authentication. Proof of delivery is critical especially when delivering bank documents or collecting deposits from the doorsteps of customers for financial instruments.

"We have been partners with Lastmile.Mobi since we first deployed multi-party payments at doorsteps," said Percy Avari, regional manager, South Asia at Aramex.

"Currently, we are deploying an upgraded version of the (company's) platform that combines payments and identification. We will begin using a multi merchant payments solution and eKYC in the near future."

Aramex had announced earlier this year that it was working with Indian startups to lower infrastructure and device costs and that it would introduce instant feedback and crowd-sourced last-mile deliveries as part of its global operations. India is the second-largest market for the Dubai-listed logistics company.

Lastmile.Mobi is also awaiting certification from UIDAI, issuer of the unique Aadhar digital numbers for Indian residents, for its iris-based biometric solution for disbursement of cash to government beneficiaries.

The company is also running a pilot for scholarship disbursement with government agencies and another for automating payment of wages to municipal workers on contract.

"We are also working with chip-set makers to customize (our) devices," said Krishna. "Businesses pay on a subscription model to deploy the payment platform."